


the composition of a cloud

by moonbeatblues



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Other, i will just. write about loving valence for the rest of time ig, spoilers for pzn 30, the only throughline of this is like. transhumanism and thinking about home.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:40:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26372851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonbeatblues/pseuds/moonbeatblues
Summary: Gur has mandibles that split to smile. It’s an easy enough motion to track, once you know what to look for.They thread a hand through Valence like he’s combing them. It feels like nothing and everything.“You must feel so far away from everyone, like this, wolf.”(Valence, and the people that know them)
Relationships: Gur Sevraq & Valence, Gur Sevraq/Valence, Kal'mera Broun & Thisbe & Valence, Kal'mera Broun/Valence, Peace | Order & Valence, a little - Relationship
Comments: 5
Kudos: 25





	the composition of a cloud

**Author's Note:**

> mostly the result of me working on my [valence playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLli8BZUpexHzVtJHTTz5dSFKtVyLqIAeU) and realizing that the first movement of tchaik 6 describes them perfectly

Valence tells them that Gur Sevraq is a testament to Partizan as something worth loving. A place where things can grow.

The Prophet’s Path a swath of life, a promise from God of what could be. With work they could coax the green, the living ocean up and out until it covered the moon. Tear the artifice of empire and cruelty from the earth, its shallow roots of metal and concrete, and fill the holes left there with plants.

And Broun tells Valence that there are other moons.

—

It is... difficult to describe home.

“We— we were closer, but not like this. I don’t know how to explain.”

Gur has mandibles that split to smile. It’s an easy enough motion to track, once you know what to look for.

They thread a hand through Valence like he’s combing them. It feels like nothing and everything.

“You must feel so far away from everyone, like this, wolf.”

Across the room in a chair their body is in repose, the mask slack and motionless. They have not thought of “wolf” as something so meaningful as to reach to this part of them, but they slide through Gur’s fingers and feel like fur, like breath.

“Not so much. Not— not right now.”

Gur laughs and gathers them close. It should be as fruitless as raking the sea into your lap, but they allow themself to be drawn.

—

Bits of Courage are strewn over Icebreaker like it’s just finished raining ribbon.

Broun is hypothermic, obviously.

Thisbe has to carry them to the medical bay, and in turn, they carry Valence, cupped in their hands like a model star.

_Broun._

Their eyes flutter and don’t open.

There’s a sash impaled on Thisbe’s horn. It reads **Oricon Exped** — and then trails into fraying thread.

Broun’s fingers fall through them and pass like listless combs when Thisbe shifts them again.

_Broun._

They transmit something along the lines of a hum.

_You need to stay awake._

Confusion. Difficulty.

_Tell me something._

Broun groans. Thisbe looks down but says nothing. They shift their hands around Valence.

_Electrons._

_What?_

_Valence. It’s, like, electrons on the outside of an atom._

_Oh._

_They form clouds because they move so fast. Just. Areas where they could be at any moment, until another atom gets close._

_Then what?_ they ask, knowing the answer.

_They share them._

It’s mostly correct.

Thisbe has to duck to enter the med bay. Clementine Kesh’s doctor actually comes through the door after them, stripping off bloody gloves and tossing them into a bin by the door.

“Operant Broun has hypothermia.”

He appears to be rummaging for medical equipment and instead produces a blanket and pillow. “Yeah. Get in the bed.”

“What?”

“They need heat. Body heat.”

“I do not have that.”

Broun giggles, helpless.

“I do.”

“What?”

They float out of Broun’s hands.

“I can heat up a container I'm in. Do you have a jar, a big one?”

Thisbe doesn’t sulk, but Valence can tell she’s disappointed to be of no help once she’s found a canister and emptied the pressurized gas in it with a loud, protesting hiss. She holds it while Valence floats in, and then busies herself tucking the stiff, reflective blanket under the cot mattress while Broun curls around the canister.

_See?_ In the canister, Valence presses themself against the side closest to Broun, carefully heating the metal. _Sharing._

They hear it more than feel when Broun taps rhythmlessly against the canister. _Guess that makes us covalent._

_Guess so._

—

_What would happen if you changed the idea?_

They would say there are wires curling from under Phrygian’s button-down and over the railing, but the wires _are_ Phrygian. Less like touching things with your fingers and more like looking from your hands.

_I don't know if I could explain the feeling to you. But it does happen._

_Is it frightening?_

_Maybe it would seem like it. It’s frightening to lose something only if your understanding and care relies on possession._

_I see._

_I had to change, to remain here. The form I had when Apostolos found me was. Not the one they wanted from me. To escape I had to be even something else. You might be able to say I was not ready for it. None of them were bright._

_I’m sorry._

The motion from Phrygian is something like an approximation of shrugging, half-physical and half-mental.

_This is bright enough, for now._

Flakes of snow begin to fall and melt in spots on their frame. Broun had had to work quickly— there’s a delay to the feeling. By the time the cold has traveled along the relay and back, the ice is already water.

Phrygian observes the sky in silence. They wonder if the feeling— the chill of something no longer cold, a second too late, seeing water even as your body tells you it is ice— would be bright to them, as bright as it makes them feel in this moment. Though maybe it’s because they know it’s a result of Broun’s work, because it makes them think of Broun soldering with their face wrested in quiet concentration, half-biting their tongue.

The ears on this mask don’t move the way their last ones did. They caught their hip on the edge of a table last week and several wires bent in— Broun had to pull them out again while Valence was still inside, flitting nervously, a mixture of caught out, already reprimanded, and intensely aware of Broun’s face pressed against their abdomen. It had taken the entire process and a few moments after for them to work up the courage to put the fingers of one hand gingerly through Broun’s hair, loose from its earlier braid, and, well. They hadn’t moved away.

They haven’t been home in a long time, but being here with Phrygian brings the ghost of an old insecurity, when their first frame had been built. Not so much fear of judgement of being seen inhabiting something, but the awareness that they would not be able to explain the feeling of it. Fear of changing their frame of reference so greatly it couldn’t be restored, and seeing it realized in juxtaposition to another. 

But they’re well past that. They think about attachment based on possession, and think that the attachment to this frame is less about their possession of it and more that the frame itself attaches _them,_ to Broun.

Maybe it’s not cohesive enough of an idea to sustain Phrygian if they wanted a change, but it’s bright enough for them. At least for now.

—

They want to laugh, a little.

_All our work, sneaking around, and you were already awake._

Order regards them quietly. They can see the white fire of themself reflected in their ancient, dutifully polished panels, licking up Order like a mirrored, intangible tide. They wonder if Order feels like God is cleaning them, too.

Or— they had scoured the records, as much as they could. Maybe they are older than God, after all. What a thought.

_You would have made a good candidate._

_Maybe if you were still Peace._

The feeling— one of the last Valence will ever intercept— is something beyond sadness.

_There are none in the Principality that know peace enough to make it from me again. Not even you, little wolf. It was taken from you when you came here._

Valence of the Nobel no longer has a mouth, but they laugh.

_Watch me._

In a cemetery built for heroes, Order kneels, and the peace that rises along their body like fire is so old they see a dome in a stolen sea, a woman with lead on her tongue.

Discovery removed their need for a candidate like an organ. Painful, deliberate, replaced with something self-sustaining and subtly, endlessly cold.

They watch the candidate they will never have become a million pieces and rise on the night air.

Then, Peace stands.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm @seafleece on tumblr, come say hello! i was hoping the thing i wrote would work for sapphic week but it ended up being this instead, but i am going to Try to at least do one more.


End file.
